Overall Member Rating

An excellent cruise on Silhouette!

The Silhouette is a fine ship with an excellent staff that has a friendly "can-do" attitude. It was sparkling clean, and we never felt crowded even though it was at near-capacity. We were CC-gty on the 10th level, and we enjoyed our cabin and service immensely.

We also found the food top-notch. We ate dinner most nights in the MDR, supplemented with Bistro on 5 (fun for a change of pace). We ate breakfast and snacks in the OceanView and various grills and was impressed with the variety of food available at all (waking) hours. Surely no one went hungry, even once!

The itenerary was up to our expectations, a combination of revisits and new ports. We mostly teamed up with other CC members and set up our own excursions, and that worked great. We did the ship transfer to Taormina because we didn't want the challenge of the public transportation system for that distance; we were tempted to go to Etna, but as it turned out that got washed out with rain and fog. We More
usually had a combo excursion--Split/Trogir, Dubrovnik/Ston, Kotor/Budva, Valletta/Mdina--and these worked well for us. (We planned to go to Perast, but it also got washed out.) Yes, foul weather followed us around, but we had plenty of rain gear to keep us mostly dry so we merrily slogged on. Just a couple of discordant notes, both involving the Italian transportation system: the train service from Civitavechia to Rome was a near-nightmare, with two cancellations and the resulting packed train. Likewise, tardy/missing buses and trains from the Amalfi coast to Naples (a "labor action") almost caused us to to miss the Naples sail-away. So, be sure to allow lots of extra time to compensate for the unpredictable public transportation service.

We used the People Mover at Venice, and that allowed us to get lost in various ways between the ship and the rest of the city--creating very enjoyable and interesting adventures. Although we've been there many times, it never gets old!

The only weak area of the ship for us was the evening entertainment. A piano concert and a tenor were real "snoozers" after touring all day, and only the ship dancers and singers provided any real sensory stimulation for a performance or two. Quite a come-down from previous cruises.

So, a very enjoyable cruise overall. Better weather would have helped, but the ship can't control everything--and it did great with the rest. Less